My life didn’t turn out. No life map to be imagined now will paint a pretty picture when a life no longer exists. What I had to offer the world left me when my 16-year-old academics-honor son, Sam, died three years ago from unknowingly taking a synthetic drug called N-BOMe as a curious teen. I am not alone in unbelievable devastation of the loss of a child. “A recent analysis of the CDC data by the New York Times found that the rising death rates of white adults between the ages of 25 and 34 made them "the first generation since the Vietnam War years of the mid 1960's to experience higher death rates in early adulthood than the generation that preceded it." But while the mortality rate for whites has been steadily rising, the death rates of blacks and Hispanics has continued to fall.”

“The drug epidemics that devastated minority communities in the '70s, '80s, and '90s created a shared aversion to hardcore drugs like heroin and crack. Marcus Anthony Hunter, an assistant professor of Sociology and African American Studies at UCLA, said minority communities are still feeling the effects of the zero-tolerance response by law enforcement to those drug epidemics. "Now that the problems of drugs have noticeably reached the vanilla suburbs, questions and claims or morality have been contested in ways often unavailable to urban minority communities," Hunter said. "Where urban minority areas are thought to be amoral breeding grounds, suburban white areas are thought to be upstanding, respectable force fields from the ills of drug use. As it turns out, neither is exactly true.”

What I offer now. No, neither is true. I’ve lived the undeniably, devastating pain to know that it is not. In the shadow of my darkness with the gallows of my heartache hanging from above; it is the only life I have to live. Trying to find my survival, my brain has aptly followed my heart at a cautiously, safe and guarded distance as my mind suffers, too; recalls, plots, plans, still dreams and wishes. Yes, just here to change the world by blazing a trail and finding the way that shows my heart is full; not dead. I will always love you Sammy; and our sweet, precious, forever memories. #muchlovetosam